Hotels

ControlWorks works with several hotel chains across Australia. We work to control the air inside a hotel room based on occupancy. Using attractive wall thermostats that are easy for guests to understand and operate. With the continuation of evolution in the user experience, some thermostat suppliers are now integrating guest smartphone control via Bluetooth.

Controlling hotel rooms based on occupancy can save significant amounts of energy in a hotel if you are able to limit each room's HVAC to running ONLY when guests are ACTUALLY present. What is important is that the logic does not require constant verification with the ability to turn off with the guests still in the room. To do this, our solution usually utilises door reed switches to track door opening to enable the system and PIR switches to verify occupancy. Once the PIR confirms occupancy, the system can be latched into an occupied mode and does not require re-verification of occupancy until the room door is next opened.

Taking the next step with networked thermostats into a site wide BMS, this can then be integrated with various hotel booking systems to further restrict room operation to only when rooms are booked, or to optimise main HVAC plant strategies based on real cooling and heating demand.

Many existing hotels are currently using very basic thermostats that simply open a drive open / spring closed CHW valve with an electric duct heater for heat. We have recently completed several projects where the room wall controllers were replaced along with units with modulating outputs and pressure independent control valves to control the amount of CHW and HHW actually required at the units to achieve conditioning the space meaning that the entire main plant did not need to run as hard.

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